ARE you planning your dream day?

Then let’s drive along the litter-strewn highway of the A34. Let’s clamber past Milton Interchange. We’ll cruise until we see the lights of the service station stain the night sky the colour of a can of Tango. For here in distant Berkshire, wedding bells can be heard.

Pictures of happy brides and grooms adorn the hotel walls. You can’t put your pint down for leaflets. In this hotel they sell weddings like they’re going out of fashion, which indeed they are.

It’s a matrimonial board game. But for one happy couple tonight it’s a board game where they no longer throw the dice.

As the wedding band tear into an Ed Sheeran cover, the first fight breaks out. Children, doing what children do, run amok through the carnage. It’s left to the bride to calm things down.

Catering staff rush back and forth. Men shout at each other in the toilet where, by half past nine, there’s an ominous brown streak across the floor. By now most of the wedding party have split into two factions. They stand against opposing walls while grandmothers are scattered at the centre, gawping into space, waiting for the cheese to arrive.

“Dad! Dad, can you lend me fifty pounds?” shouts the teenager. It becomes twenty, then five. His Dad just ignores him. Like me, he’s trying to watch Jaws on ITV4.

Outside in the smoking area a woman braves the cold March air in a mini-skirt. She’s bent over crying as someone tries to comfort her.

A second fight breaks out. You have to feel for the bride, groom and their families. Months of planning, tonnes of money, all building up to a stand-off in a hotel corridor, led by one or two people who’ve had too much drink.

I’ve read about a footballer’s £40,000 wedding where the bride was punched in the face. Guests were throwing lobster thermidor at each other. I admit it sounds like brilliant entertainment, if a little pricey.

The catering company referred to the guests as “peasants” – a dreadful insult that should seen their licence revoked.

I’ve read about a wedding where a pork pie was thrown across the room, and three people were arrested in the punch-up that followed. “You’ve got to expect a good punchup at a wedding” commented the bride in the morning. At least she had the nerve and decency to stand up for her family.

I’ve come to loathe the corporate branding of these hotel weddings, which are not for everyone. They can take what should be a personal commitment between two people and turn it into a factory.

Minimum wage staff cracking up behind the scenes. Chefs looking bored. A consultant punching profits into an Excel spreadsheet.

What fun could be had with these posters were the truth unveiled?